Recently, I have been reading the late American Business Writer Jay Conrad Levinson’s book, Guerrilla Marketing: Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for making big profits from your small business. In a chapter of the book, the author has listed down twenty ways in which guerrilla marketing differs from the old-fashioned brand of marketing. In one of the ways, the writer defines traditional marketing as an approach, which suggests a brand to observe its industrial market completely to decide which of its competitors are to be utterly defeated by it.
Conversely, he proclaims guerrilla marketing as an outlook, which advocates a brand to discover businesses that possess the same kind of potential customers/clients and standards as it does, so that the brand can collaborate with the selected businesses in their marketing endeavours.
By opting the latter, Jay Conrad Levinson asserts that a brand is expanding its marketing reach, but reducing its marketing cost as it is sharing the expenses with the fellow business. And, he puts forth the term Fusion Marketing, which guerrillas use for this viewpoint.
There are tons of great examples for Fusion Marketing out there. To show you what makes them so captivating, I have curated a list of 4 examples of interesting Fusion Marketing instances. Here we go!
1. Burger King and Budweiser
Targeting the 2018 summer, the American brands, Burger King (BK) and Budweiser partnered and launched a limited edition burger named American Brewhouse King Sandwich and a special crown referred as Freedom Crown, for fans of both brands, to celebrate the Independence Day of United States of America. The crown, which holds both an American Brewhouse King Sandwich and a Budweiser beer, was available for people aged 21 or older, for a limited time. In the process, the collaboration revived the American beer maker’s iconic campaign, Whassup. In which, the original Budweiser Whassup commercial was remade by seasoning it with a special cameo from The King himself. To top it all, the BK’s mascot, holding a set of the new burger in his hand, “spoke” for the first time, in the spot. The ad was meant for supporting the revitalized campaign, driven by the agencies MullenLowe and David.
Whassup 2018 is one among the campaigns of BK that epitomizes the fast food restaurant’s Global CMO, Fernando Machado’s regular catchphrase, Burger King team is fighting the good fight for creativity!
Watch the ad below!
😝 #whassup @budweiserusa pic.twitter.com/uEGLmiqq7D
— Burger King (@BurgerKing) June 27, 2018
Marketing Journo
2. Uber and Mission Impossible 6: Fallout
When Tom Cruise is committed in doing all his high-risk stunts in the sixth Mission Impossible instalment, Fallout then how are the trained stunt men, hired by Paramount Pictures, occupying themselves?
You get to hear a light-hearted answer encapsulated in a video created by Uber, to promote its sponsorship of the red carpet premiere of Mission Impossible – Fallout that took place on July 12th 2018 in Paris.
In the documentary-style interview video, a fictional stunt man named Adrian Cooper talks about the ways in which he uses his plentiful downtime on the shooting spots.
One best way, in which he spends time, is to drive for Uber. Apart from enthusiastically letting his customers know about Tom’s daredevil stunts in Fallout, he conveys them on him being eager to watch the live streaming of the movie’s world premiere in Uber’s YouTube channel. The video ends with him saying, “I can’t wait to see all the stunts I didn’t do”!
Watch the hilarious video by clicking the link in the below tweet!
Why You Won’t See This Stunt Double for Tom Cruise on the Big Screen. https://t.co/nEBHNzwLMM #MissionImpossible
— Mission: Impossible (@MissionFilm) July 5, 2018
3. The Lego Movie and Turkish Airlines
Ahead of the upcoming release of The Lego Movie 2, Turkish Airlines partnered with The Lego Movie franchise and created an in-flight safety video, comprising the stars of The Lego Movie, driven predominantly by characters like Emmett and Wyldstyle. In the infotainment video, the cast takes passengers through the safety procedures, which are usually explained by the crew members before the flight takes off. It’s a fun way to kick-start the flight journey with a video, which brings together two brands that are well-known across the globe.
As per The Drum, 16 production specialists have toiled for 950 days to turn 2,938,840 Lego bricks into this edutainment video.
Also, the video kicks off a drive, which will encompass a global TV campaign, themed wrapped airlines, in-flight and in-airport activations and a second safety video.
Click the link in the below tweet to enjoy the Turkish Airlines Safety Video with The LEGO Movie Characters!
https://twitter.com/TurkishAirlines/status/1040989118782693377
4. Aquaman and Ocean Conservancy
Going by Jason Momoa’s comments to Comicbook.com, the threat posed by pollution in the oceans seem to factor into the Aquaman’s portrayal of the conflict between the surface and Atlantis. This major plot point of Aquaman makes sense of its pairing with the non-profit environmental advocacy group Ocean Conservancy for the organization’s 33rd annual International Coastal Cleanup event, conducted on September 15th 2018.
As a lead-up to the event, people were encouraged through the Aquaman’s social media to be an Ocean Hero by joining it, downloading the organization’s app, Clean Swell and subsequently, participating in a Cleanup event near them. Post cleanup, volunteers were asked to submit data related to the marine debris collected by them in the app. Volunteers using Cleanup data cards were provided with an option to enter the details into Ocean Conservancy’s database. Eventually, the data will be formulated to Ocean Trash Index, which will then be an information source for everyone on the impact of the ocean trashes.
Please find below the peek into the International Coastal Cleaup, which happened on September 15th 2018.
Thank you Ocean Heroes for joining #Aquaman and @OurOcean at the International Coastal Cleanup. To continue protecting our oceans, visit https://t.co/HISH9mQuNQ pic.twitter.com/bykZfX6Mz0
— Aquaman Movie (@aquamanmovie) September 18, 2018
Conclusion:
In the aforementioned fusion marketing campaigns, it is evident that the brands have adopted the guerrilla marketing outlook by discovering businesses that possess the same kind of potential customers/clients and standards as they do and collaborated with the selected businesses in their marketing endeavours. These approaches would have helped the brands to get more bang for their bucks, with less work.